


The Court Of The Raven King

by The_Whelk



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bran is not Bran, Crack Treated Seriously, Elves, Fantasy, Ficlet, Folklore, Gen, Grimdark, Magic, Memory Magic, My First Work in This Fandom, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s08e06 The Iron Throne, Post-Season/Series Finale, Revenge, Season 9, Show Only, Time Shenanigans, Time Travel, Unseelie Court, What if?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 20:28:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18902062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Whelk/pseuds/The_Whelk
Summary: So, how does a deathless time-wizard rule six kingdoms and what was the Three-Eyed Raven's plan all along?





	The Court Of The Raven King

Samwell Tarly, Grand Maester to the King, paces back and forth in his chambers. He's paced back and forth so long he's worn a path into the carpeting. He is pacing because he's trying to remember something and has difficulty remembering what he was supposed to remember. "There was a time..." he thinks, looking out the window onto the massive thorn bush growing out and around of the ruins of the old Sept. "How many years again did it take for that to grow?" He thought. The word "year" struck him as strange - the seasons had become even and predictable after the death of the Night King - but the word "year" didn't feel right, it didn't fit. Sam begins to panic, he doesn't remember what he's supposed to remember but he does remember having more words for things. He remembers not struggling so hard for them. Sam decides he has to keep better track of things, he needs a record to keep things in order. After failing to find paper, ink, and quill (and stumbling too long on the word for 'an instrument used to make an indelible mark on parchment'), he picks up a small serving knife from the tray his supper arrived on and opens a desk drawer, intending to mark it for each sundown.

The inside of the drawer is covered in marks. He opens another and another and another, there's no room for another mark. 

"How strange." Sam thought. He drops the knife and turns to the window again, the view filled with the thorny Sept.

"There was a time.." he thinks.

\-----

Once there was a Red Keep, now there is a Green Wood. The rebuilding of King's Landing was slow to begin but once the first shoots of the Green Wood rose from the Red Keep, things took on a different countenance. The ruins of the Old Sept were choked by a hard thorny bush which grew so quickly people swore they could hear it. Images and icons of the Seven started to change, sprouting vines and leaves around the edges. The remaining priests began to add titles and names to the Seven during ceremonies and a statue of the Stranger for the newly constructed Sept appeared in its niche with a raven's head and coat of dragonglass daggers. No one knew who made it.

But this was increasingly the case. Buildings or roads would appear overnight, as if plucked from memory and placed down. People too. Survivors of the razing of King's Landing said they met people they saw burned alive in front of them wandering the ruins in a daze, unable to make sense of the last few days-weeks-years of their lives. Then there was the other people, the small bark-skinned people who kept to the Green Wood and near the carved Weirwood faces that erupted and clustered around the city surfaces like mushroom patches. When pressed, these people would say they saw the Wall being built, they helped smash the land bridge into the Stepstones, they attended the signing of the Pact between the Children Of The Forest and the First Men. Furthermore, they didn't claim to be thousands of years old, just that they had been fleeing from First Men raiding parties, or hiding in the North, and now they where here. And they increased in number as Green Wood spread and sent out new roots. From a dragon's eye view, King's Landing resembled a park with a city hidden inside it. 

Stories of nightmares spread like wildfire. Children gone missing from beds, shadows without figures stalking people, clusters of stinging flowers that sung like maidens, and large clawed beasts roaming the catacombs and sewers. But there where also miracles. A fountain of the finest Dornish wine erupted for six days in a rubble-cleared square, a flock of sheep with golden wool roamed the refugee tents, and an entire leveled neighborhood near the coast bloomed into fresh berry groves, chestnut trees, and wild onions ripe for the picking.

It was hard to separate fact from rumor. People said they heard the Free Cities spent a month of feasting and celebration after the death of the Night King, that noblemen and high priests fought for the honor of being burned alive for The Lord Of Light. People said Drogon fled to Old Valyria, where The Dragon Queen's body lies uncorrupted as the day she died, worshiped by the Stone Men. People said the North had become a paradise of free land and free people. It was difficult to tell account from fiction. No ravens arrived and ravens sent out never returned. Visitors to the city either stayed or left quickly, residents leaving the city became sluggish and difficult to rouse the longer they stayed away. And Green Wood kept growing. 

\-----------

Bronn, Master of Coin for The King and ruler of Highgarden, has not had a night's sleep in days, possibly weeks. He's lost count. Its so difficult to count now. In his last meeting with The King (What was his name again? There was a time he had a name) Bronn was told to make a marriage with the Children. Bronn said he wasn't going to marry a child, there's no fun in it and The King didn't laugh so much as ...well he couldn't describe what he did, it was like the air got amused. The King said it would be a very high honor, he made a special trip *behind* to find a match. She would be well positioned and regarded in Highgarden, so known for civility and refinement.

Bronn doesn't remember saying 'yes'. He doesn't remember how he got to Highgarden, but since then every night has started with the tinkle of bells and light drumming. Every night he appears in the great stained glass Highgarden Hall, full of candles and wine and cakes, to meet his bride. She is small and mute, wearing a series of green and blue robes. Every night Bronn begs her to let him go and every night her and her retinue, clad in flowers and bulging fruit and vines, command him to dance. And dance he does, with her, with members of her court. All the wine tastes like acid, all the cakes like ash. He tried to bribe her with gold, she turned it to autumn leaves. He tried to attack her with a dagger, she turned it into a bird. Whatever deal has been struck between The King and whatever God or Monster he pulled from the distant primordial muck is too hard to break. And so Bronn dances and dances, and smiles and smiles, surrounded in wealth and luxury that crumbles at his touch. 

\----------

That which was Bran considers that which was King's Landing from the eyes of the ravens, from the cats, from the sparrows and the trees. That which was Bran is the city, he is its soil and its gardener.

He got rid of clocks first. That was easy. Books came later. That was harder. You need some writing for commerce, but who needs history when you are history?

Had they created the Night King to get to this moment? The King didn't think that way. What had happened had happened to create this victory. You just needed to think in larger scales. Some part of The King that was still Bran had fondness for his siblings, so the Andels and First Men's descendants in the North and Beyond The Wall can enjoy wild growth for now. Whatever now was. Soon the whole of Westeros will be covered in wierwood and heart trees again. The Children of the Forest tried to hide themselves away, to isolate themselves from the world of Men. They won't make that mistake again. They must manage Man, pruning and shaping their course into the past and future. The supremacy of Man was an aberration, an untamed weed that threw all of nature out of whack. Soon, under the watchful eye of the wierwoods every man in Westeros will know:

The King is Peaceful.  
The King is Merciful.  
The King is Everywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> story suggested by Prize Bull Octorok. Apologies to Susanna Clarke.


End file.
